Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is greeted by Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting Monday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The two first met at the Iowa Capitol in 1985. / Andy Wong/AP

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Last week’s domestic news headlines were relentlessly grim and violent. But there was a bright, neighborly spot on the other side of the globe in China.

Dozens of Iowans spent the week in China, including quality time in the northern Hebei province that has forged a partnership with our state in the past few decades.

Gov. Terry Branstad met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the fifth time. They sat in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with Branstad at the president’s right hand.

Back in 1985, the two met at the Iowa Capitol, when Xi was a young, regional politician from Hebei and Branstad was in his first term as governor. Last year, Xi officially introduced himself to America as vice president of China and made a prominent stopover in Iowa as if to tout his folksy agrarian roots.

So last week drew the time lines together. Xi welcomed the Iowans as China’s newly elected president at the peak of his political career. Hebei, meanwhile, celebrated the 30th anniversary of its official ties with our state.

“We’ve gone from being friends to really trusted allies,” Branstad told reporters last week in a conference call from China.

Thanks to the relative predictability of Chinese communist party politics, Xi is likely to lead the world’s most populous nation for the next decade.

Even if Branstad doesn’t run or isn’t reelected in 2014, Iowa has its foot in the door. And that’s why there has been so much optimism: After getting to know each other in such a gradual and personable manner, will the next decade of Iowa-China relations with Xi at the helm follow a full-speed ahead agenda to benefit both of us?

There were a few different overlapping itineraries in play last week, even though the overall theme of “trade mission” more or less fit:

• Branstad led a delegation to the second China-U.S. Governors Forum in Tianjin that focused on the economy, trade and the environment.

• A group from Iowa Sister States, the nonprofit organization that manages Iowa’s official citizen diplomacy with foreign states and nations (including Hebei), spent more time on cultural and educational exchanges in Hebei. (As I’ve mentioned before in the interest of full disclosure, last year I became involved in this nonprofit as an unpaid board member.)

• And Iowa companies tagged along with both delegations to network.

The circle of “old friends” who were involved in Xi’s original trip to Iowa 28 years ago are becoming more visible as China’s leader settles into his presidency.

Luca Berrone, general manager of industrial equipment manufacturer SACMI USA in Urbandale, was a founding member of Iowa Sister States who chauffeured Xi around Iowa in 1985. He and Sarah Lande, who has played host to Xi at her home in Muscatine, last week formed a formal old friends committee with the four retired Chinese officials who accompanied Xi to Iowa in 1985.

So these six cross-cultural old friends in a sense are spearheading an entirely new phase of U.S.-China relations — at least the part that doesn’t have to wrangle with nuclear threats from North Korea’s Kim Jong-un or meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

In essence they’re the “spreader of the gospel of a new relationship” between our two nations, said Berrone, who first came to Des Moines from his native Italy as an exchange student.

The committee — plus others in the wider circle of old friends and Sister States volunteers — will reconvene in Iowa in September as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations on this side of the globe.

But last week it was Hebei’s turn to party. Iowa delegates were wined, dined and sung to in grand style in the capital city of Shijiazhuang.

Hebei’s territory wraps around China’s capital city of Beijing, the epicenter of national political power. The province also stares across the Sea of Japan at North Korea.

Iowa by contrast is landlocked, a long drive from the White House and sparsely populated (our 3 million residents dwarfed by Hebei’s 72 million).

But our two lands were far more different decades ago.

When David Kruidenier visited China in 1979 on one of his many fact-finding missions, The Des Moines Register’s then-chairman and publisher reported back on his “overwhelming impression” of the “mass of humanity” in Beijing (then Peking) and Shanghai.

He waded through crowds of Chinese wearing drab, unisex Mao jackets. Almost nobody owned their own cars.

Contrast that to last week, when Iowans toured the Great Wall Motor Company in Hebei, the nation’s largest auto manufacturer, where 1,000 cars, trucks and SUVs are churned out daily.

There was an overflow crowd, Berrone added, for a seminar on the American EB-5 visa program designed to spur foreign investment and job creation.

Branstad told the China Daily that Iowa will “do what we can to make it easier for direct investment in our state” and “get our national government to make the process of getting a visa easier.”

China is more interested than ever in our agricultural expertise and exports, whether it’s poultry, pork, grain or farm implements.

We’ve entered a “more pragmatic” phase of our relationship with China, Berrone said from Beijing, with everybody eager to talk serious details.

There also was a palpable buzz of anticipation on the streets of China last week for the start of a new political decade.

Xi has “ignited and magnetized this country,” Berrone said.

Now we’ll see what sort of pull we feel in Iowa.

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns, blog posts and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/munson. Connect with him on Facebook (Kyle Munson’s Iowa) and Twitter (@KyleMunson).